The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

In the ensuing years there must have been many times when Andrew Jackson, junior, looked back on the sage advice embraced in that letter and wished that he had indeed learned a lesson from the injudicious purchase of the tool-chest suited for a parlor and the tools such as cabinet makers use. He had plenty of “bought wit” in the years to come; and most of it was, indeed, “bought too dear.”

Andrew also caused the old man considerable worry at this time by having purchased a slave in Maryland before returning to the Hermitage, paying only a part of the purchase price in cash and leaving a balance due. He neglected to say anything to Jackson about the unpaid balance, and he learned of it only when the Maryland slavetrader dunned him for the money. This annoyed and embarrassed Jackson, but his chief concern was evidently not the money involved; he was worried about Andrew’s careless business habits. “Why will you not, my dear Andrew,” he wrote him, “attend to my admonition about money matters?” And, further, “My son, at all times and on all occasions state to your father things just as they are.”

Inattentive to these admonitions, however, Andrew gave further cause for annoyance during that summer when he repurchased the old Hunter’s Hill property adjoining the Hermitage. Jackson had consented that Andrew make the purchase if he thought it advisable, encouraging the young man to take the initiative and make the decision for himself; but he was particular to impress on Andrew that he wanted him to have the terms of the sale reduced to writing and a copy of the agreement forwarded to him. Nevertheless, his first knowledge of the purchase was a draft drawn on him for the first payment on the purchase price; and then began a long succession of letters from father to son unsuccessfully seeking to learn the exact details of the trade. Similarly, he was unable to get from Andrew information as to the number of pounds of cotton baled and shipped to New Orleans. “My son,” he wrote in May, “surely it is a duty that you would owe to an entire stranger, surely more imperious to me, to acknowledge the receipt of such business letters as these.” And again, despairingly, in June: “My son, why will you not learn to transact your affairs like a man of business?”

Andrew, apparently, was incorrigibly negligent about answering letters; for in October, when Jackson had returned to Washington after spending the summer at the Hermitage, he wrote him: “Thirty-one days have elapsed since we left the Hermitage, Sarah on a sick bed. I had your promise that you would write me how they were; and I am now, even now, without one line from you.”

To add to the old General’s worries at this stage of young Andrew’s career, there is strong evidence that he had reason to be fearful of his son’s falling into intemperate habits. Perhaps the young wife conveyed the idea to the old man. At any rate, Sarah went on a visit to Philadelphia early in April, 1835, leaving Andrew at home, supposedly looking after the work of rebuilding the burned Hermitage; and on April 14,1835, Jackson wrote him a long and pointed fatherly letter concerning the evils of intemperance, in the course of which he said: “When I reflect on the fate of your cousin Savern, brought on him by intemperance, from being an honor to his friends reduced to the contempt of all by his brutal intemperance, I shudder when I see any appearance of it in any other branch of our connection. Your conduct, standing as my representative, the son of the President, draws upon you the eyes of the world, and the least deviation from the rules of strict decorum and propriety are observed and commented upon by all our enemies and those who envy you of your situation. Added to this, your charming little wife and sweet little ones’ respectability in society depends on your upright course in your walks of life. This, my son, ought always to be before your eyes, and I am sure must be; and your pledge to me on the point of intemperance assures me that you never will permit spirits to enter your lips again.”

A few weeks later, taking as his text the experience of a Washington friend who had been humiliated by public drunkenness, Jackson wrote Andrew another letter of warning against “intoxication, which reduces the human being below that of the brute,” concluding his letter with: “Oh, my son, if you were to be found in such condition it would destroy me.”

These letters apparently had the desired effect, for Major Lewis after visiting the Hermitage in May, 1835, wrote Jackson that he was much gratified at the fine and healthy appearance of the young man, that he looked like a different person; and, he concluded: “I have no doubt he has faithfully complied with his promise to you to the letter.” Jackson, upon receipt of Major Lewis’s letter, wrote at once to Andrew telling him how delighted he was at the favorable report of his good conduct and healthful appearance and his good standing with everybody. “This, my son,” he said, “is more grateful to your dear father than all the wealth of Peru, and I have now the greatest confidence in your good conduct through life”—which confidence, the future revealed, was well placed.

Early in the summer of 1835 Andrew joined Sarah and the children at the White House and they went with the President for another vacation at the Rip Raps in July and August. They went on a visit to Philadelphia in September, and late in that month Andrew went back to the Hermitage, leaving Sarah to return to Tennessee later. They were there at the Hermitage in the summer of 1836 when Jackson came to look at his rebuilt home, but they went to Philadelphia again in October and then for a final visit to the White House. They left there with the worn-out ex-President in March, 1837, and all returned to the Hermitage together.

At this time the son’s little family consisted of his wife, Sarah, and a little son and daughter: Andrew, III, born April 4, 1834; and Rachel, born in 1832. Both the children were born at the Hermitage, and they were a never-failing source of pleasure and comfort to the old General in his declining years. Little Rachel was his especial pet from the time she was born, and she was one of those who stood by his bedside when he died.

Like every doting grandfather, he was inordinately proud of her cunning little ways; and he chuckled as he related to his friends how the little girl, upon her arrival at the White House with her mother following the burning of the Hermitage, greeted him with: “Grandpa, the great fire burned my bonnet; and a big owl tried to kill Poll, but Papa killed the owl.” Needless to say, Grandpa dropped all the affairs of State long enough to see that little Rachel was supplied with a new bonnet without delay. And he probably joined her in rejoicing over the narrow escape of old Poll from the owl, for the old Hermitage parrot was a great pet of the General’s. In his letters home he inquired about her, and William Donelson in writing to him in December, 1829, said: “Poor Poll is doing well. She is as fat and saucy as ever. From her continued good health I think she will live to be an old bird. Elizabeth desires to be remembered affectionately to you, and says that she will insure Polly’s life till you return.” As a matter of fact, the old bird outlived the General himself; and she distinguished herself by introducing an element of the grotesque into the solemnity of the funeral services when she suddenly startled the assembled mourners by bursting into a loud torrent of profanity which made it necessary to suspend proceedings until her perch could be removed from the upper front portico to a more remote vantage point.